Madison County Klavern

The Madison County Klavern was the local chapter ("klavern") of the Ku Klux Klan in Madison County, Mississippi. The klavern had existed during the early 20th century, but it had been defunct for decades when, in 1984, Freddie Lee Cobb established the revived klavern with support from Grand Dragon Stump Sisson. The Klavern was started by six local white supremacists who were incensed by the African-American vigilante Carl Lee Hailey's murders of white supremacist rapists Pete Willard and Billy Ray Cobb (Freddie Lee's brother), who had raped Hailey's ten-year-old daughter Tonya Hailey. The Klavern took part in the 1984 Canton riots, during which they clashed with the NAACP and anti-racist demonstrators; Sisson was killed by a Molotov cocktail. The Klavern carried out terrorist acts against the people of Canton with the goal of intimidating them against supporting Carl Lee Hailey, and their acts included attempting to bomb his attorney Jake Brigance's home, planting burning crosses on the lawns of potential jurors, kidnapping and assaulting law clerk Ellen Roark, and assaulting Brigance's secretary Ethel Twitty (leading to her husband's death). After Hailey was acquitted, Freddie Lee Cobb and several other Klansmen were arrested for the acts of terror that they had carried out.